Wednesday, December 16, 2009

When the Telangana agitation slipped out of TRS leader K Chandrasekhar Rao's hands and taken by students of Osmania University in Hyderabad, there were violent incidents witnessed and infiltration of radicals, the students’ wing of Maoists in the campus of Osmania, created panic in Union home ministry. The home ministry pressed the panic button based on intelligence reports warning of a possible resurgence of Maoist violence in Telangana around the sentiment for a separate state. Home minister P Chidambaram pushed the assessment based on intelligence reports to the core committee that met to resolve the Telangana issue and there was a hasty decision taken on Telangana statehood.

With the decision of the centre to let Andhra break up, the demand from other regions for separation is gathering some speed. Leaders in Vidharba, Bundelkhand , UP, WB, Tamilnadu, Gujrat see a window of opportunity to break away from the larger entities of which they are now a part. Letting Telangana separate from Andhra has opened a pandora's box. What we see in the entire episode is political opportunism, lack of political wisdom and the actual issue the development of the underdeveloped regions has taken a back seat.

A larger issue is the very question of the viability and need for smaller states across the country. This issue requires sensitivity and foresight from the political establishment, something that has been sorely missing so far. In the entire process, we have not seen the prime minister of India taking any decision while as a PM he has to do something. While we have seen that, the demands for separate state are based on backwardness of a region and not based on one language and one state formula, it would be wiser on part of the government to immediately set up new State Reorganization Committee rather than announcing a separate statehood for Telangana.